Rockridge NCPC Notes Substantial Rise in Crime, 2014 to '15

How's crime in the Rockridge beats? The board of the NCPC realizes that all crime is upsetting, and it is upsetting to the NCPC boardmembers, too, who also live in the neighborhood. But compared to almost anywhere else in Oakland, Rockridge has very low crime.

As board secretary, I collect monthly data from the Oakland Police statistics site. All the data for 2015 is not in yet, but there is enough to make some comparisons between 2014 and 2015 (through October). This is summary data; I publish monthly lists of reported crimes at http://tinyurl.com/pnkx4qk.

The NCPC is associated with two community policing beats, 12Y and 13X. These beats cover an area generally south of the Berkeley border, north of 51st Street/ Pleasant Valley, east of Telegraph Avenue, and west of Highway 13. Beat 12Y is west of Broadway, Beat 13X is east of Broadway. Beat 13X has lower crime levels than beat 12Y although it has incidents of burglary, auto burglary, and auto theft. The following summarized numbers are mainly for 12Y.

As representatives of the Police Department have told us at many community meetings, the department's first concern is mainly with crimes against the person - homicides, assaults, and robberies - because of their potential for physical harm to victims.

In 2014, Beat 12Y had 78 crimes against the person and no month had more than 11 incidents.

In 2015, through October, 12Y has already had 79 crimes against the person, with two occurrences of 11 or 12 per month. 2015 has a month left to go but it seems likely the trend will continue.

Next of concern to the police and - certainly to residents - are property crimes. The police divide property crimes into general property crimes and auto-related property crimes. Both types of crimes are definitely up in 2015 (through October) over 2014, and will very likely continue to increase through the holidays.

In 2014, general property crimes committed in 12Y totaled 246 incidents, ranging from 13 per month to 32 a month.

In 2015 through October, 12Y has already had 263 general property crimes.